A Truly Golden Retriever

You know the episode where Kramer has this terrible cough but, not trusting human doctors, he finds a dog with a similar cough and off they both go to the vet? Well, here is the converse of that story, and it’s not from Seinfeld. It’s from The Very Rich, by Joseph Thorndike, Jr., via Dave Davis:

John Wendel worked as a porter for John Jacob Astor and took to heart his employer’s advice to invest his savings in land. With unwavering trust in this ancestral wisdom, the family held on to their real estate until in the twentieth century it was valued at one hundred million dollars. The last of their line were two spinster sisters, Miss Ella and Miss Rebecca, who for fifty years seldom ventured outside their brownstone, huddled amid the stores and office buildings at the corner of 39th Street and Fifth Avenue.

According to Lucius Beebe, they resisted offers of five million dollars and up because their succession of dogs, each named Tobey, liked the garden to run in. Once when they could not reach a veterinary, the current Tobey was taken to Flower Memorial Hospital, where a kindly doctor treated him. The Misses Wendel did not forget, and in 1931, when Miss Ella died, leaving the family estate to charities, sixteen million dollars of it went to Flower Hospital.